Dense packings of polyhedra: Platonic and Archimedean solids

作     者：S. Torquato Y. Jiao 

作者机构：Department of Chemistry Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08544 USA Princeton Center for Theoretical Science Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08544 USA Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08544 USA Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08544 USA School of Natural Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Princeton New Jersey 08540 USA Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Princeton University Princeton New Jersey 08544 USA 

出 版 物：《Physical Review E》 (物理学评论E辑：统计、非线性和软体物理学)

年 卷 期：2009年第80卷第4期

页      面：041104-041104页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 070203[理学-原子与分子物理] 0702[理学-物理学] 

基　　金：Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, MPS, (0804431, 0820341) Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, MPS 

主　　题：Optimization 

摘      要：Understanding the nature of dense particle packings is a subject of intense research in the physical, mathematical, and biological sciences. The preponderance of previous work has focused on spherical particles and very little is known about dense polyhedral packings. We formulate the problem of generating dense packings of nonoverlapping, nontiling polyhedra within an adaptive fundamental cell subject to periodic boundary conditions as an optimization problem, which we call the adaptive shrinking cell (ASC) scheme. This optimization problem is solved here (using a variety of multiparticle initial configurations) to find the dense packings of each of the Platonic solids in three-dimensional Euclidean space R3, except for the cube, which is the only Platonic solid that tiles space. We find the densest known packings of tetrahedra, icosahedra, dodecahedra, and octahedra with densities 0.823…, 0.836…, 0.904…, and 0.947…, respectively. It is noteworthy that the densest tetrahedral packing possesses no long-range order. Unlike the densest tetrahedral packing, which must not be a Bravais lattice packing, the densest packings of the other nontiling Platonic solids that we obtain are their previously known optimal (Bravais) lattice packings. We also derive a simple upper bound on the maximal density of packings of congruent nonspherical particles and apply it to Platonic solids, Archimedean solids, superballs, and ellipsoids. Provided that what we term the “asphericity (ratio of the circumradius to inradius) is sufficiently small, the upper bounds are relatively tight and thus close to the corresponding densities of the optimal lattice packings of the centrally symmetric Platonic and Archimedean solids. Our simulation results, rigorous upper bounds, and other theoretical arguments lead us to the conjecture that the densest packings of Platonic and Archimedean solids with central symmetry are given by their corresponding densest lattice packings. This can be regarded to be